First time user to the IBM Forum so I hope this is a reasonable request.

I'm working on a large legacy product that has code that spans the last 20 years. Some small legacy components within that product that haven't changed in a long time are built using Visual C++ V4 (1994) and Visual C++ V6 (1996) compilers. The executables are built using Makefiles that utilise these old archived compilers (compiler\vc\4.1\msdev\bin\CL.EXE).

I would like to determine whether any older version of PureCoverage would support instrumenting these old components without the need to bring the old components into the 21st century :-)

BTW, we have PureCoverage licenses etc. purchased from IBM and are using them on the key components in our product.

Have you tried using the current version of PureCoverage against your legacy app? The
current version of PureCoverage is 7.0.1.0 iFix 003, and while Visual Studio C++ 6.0
is not officially supported in this release (meaning, we no longer do any testing against
it), I would still expect it to work fine with C++ applications created in VS6. In fact,
I still have a copy of VS6 installed on my laptop!

The problem with going back to older versions of PureCoverage is that they likely would
NOT run on the OS that you're using. For example, PureCoverage 6.0 dates back to 1998 and
it supports VS6 --- but only supports Windows NT. :-)

Another potential issue is that PureCoverage for Windows did not exist 20 years ago. So,
we really can't be sure that it will work with the VS4 components in your application.
For example, PureCoverage may not even recognize the debug file format used in VS4. (The
debug file format may vary from release to release of Visual Studio).

So whether you use an OLDER version of PureCoverage or the current version, the support
for VS6 is pretty much the same. If you ask me, I'd say you're better off using the current
version of PurifyPlus (and PureCoverage).

You have a good point about old versions and supported OS. I might try and get the current version to work with Visual Studio C++ V6. (There is no IDE plugin for Visual Studio 6 but it's not all that outdated in technical terms).

If anyone has knowledge of the history of PureCoverage that could rule in/out the possibility of it working with VC4 or VC6 please advise.

Well, let's see. Purify for Windows was released back in 1996. I believe it
was version 5.1 and it supported Microsoft Developer Studio (the version prior
to Visual Studio 97). PureCoverage for Windows was added about a year later.
The first version of PureCoverage was 6.0. See attached release notes for a
list of supported compilers and operating systems. In short:
Architecture: Win32 programs only
Compilers: Microsoft Visual C++ (4.2, 5.0sp3, 6.0)
Microsoft Visual Basic (5.0sp3, 6.0)
OS: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 or later
So, even though VC/C++ 4.2, 5.0sp3 and 6.0 are no longer officially supported,
there's a pretty good chance the current version of PureCoverage would still work
with programs built by those older compiler versions.

>
> There's no IDE plugin for Visual Studio 6...
>

The IDE plugin is just a convenience, really. IBM actually had an unsupported
plugin for VS6 that was available for a while (even though VS6 was no longer
supported). If you wanted to try it out, I could probably dig it up.

That info is really useful and gives me something to work with. At least I know it's not necessarily impossible. When time permits I'll do some further work on this over the next week. If I do manage to get things working with older C++ compiler versions I'll post on the thread.

You were correct and an excellent help. When looking for a needle in a haystack it's motivational to know there be one there.

Despite Rational PurifyPlus Win_7.0.1 only being shipped with WS2005 and WS2008 IDE Plugins it still supports Visual Studio C++ V4 or V6 projects. When PureCoverage is run as a standalone GUI and is pointed at executable file generated by either Visual Studio C++ V4 or V6 IDE's it runs the executable fine and generates all the relevant data. It even allows one to look at the annotated source code. I was quite surprised in the case of VC4.

Next step is to try and work out if an executable is generated by a VC4 Compiler in a build script and installed on a Windows 2008 Server as a windows service how I can actually get PureCoverage to work with the Windows Service and match it to annotated code.

I had seen that page in passing a while back when I was evaluating some of the future work I was planning.

Just a quick one (in case you know). Would PureCoverage support covering multiple processes/services running at once ? I may be looking to instrument anywhere between 3 and 45 simultaneously on a large system in the future. Again, just nice to know that it's a possibility.

The PurifyPlus tools (Purify, Quantify, PureCoverage) can all work with
multiple processes and/or services running at once. The only thing to
be careful about is the fact that instrumented applications are fairly
"resource intensive". So, just make sure you have enough RAM and CPU
power if you intend to run several instrumented apps at the same time!